Everyone has a different opinion on this - so I thought I would start a poll to get an idea of how we can make this work. Obviously if we become popular, paying for hosting could start to become expensive so a way to pay for the hosting and potentially pay for prizes would be needed.

Nobody is going to pay to play when they can do it at other sites for free. I'm not sure if anyone will pay to host either, I have no money to spare for that being in college. Ads are the only logical way to go in my opinion._________________Everyone is different, no two people are not on fire...

Seriously, I'm of the opinion that banner ads are the way to go. As far as I can tell, there are two kinds - ones where you get paid when people click, and ones where you get paid just for hosting them.

The former pay more, but it relies on people actually clicking (and I for one don't particularly click much on the NR ones). The latter pays less, and they have reasonably high lower limits (so you have to earn at least $30 a month or so to get paid).

Actually... popups wouldn't be so bad because I've got the Google toolbar (blocks popups). If you can get popups that give you money just for existing, and not for how many people view/click it, that'd be good. Just everyone go get a blocker.

Hehe, at the moment we're not planning on having any sort of revenue for the site. As long as we don't have excessive bandwidth, it should be feasible to run without having to resort to banners or pop-ups._________________Puzzletome - Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

In an attempt to get this thread back on topic, I wouldn't go with anything requiring user action, ie. no ads that must be clicked, no donations and no merchandise shop. That stuff just doesn't work. Apart from that, most people block popups and ads so they don't even get a chance to click.
Forcing people to pay is even worse: people will flee from this site so fast they create a vacuum behind them.
The only way to go is to get paid for hosting ads or popups. I don't care which of those two you use, cos I have blockers for both (for those interested, PopNot and TweakXP ad blocker, both work excellent)_________________Never give up, keep on playing
Visit www.hadtoplayon.com

Ask for donations if you enjoy the site...I mean, yeah...youre not going to make tons of money, but hell someone throwing 5 bucks in the coffer here and there definately has more potential than those ad thingies...

Ask for donations if you enjoy the site...I mean, yeah...youre not going to make tons of money, but hell someone throwing 5 bucks in the coffer here and there definately has more potential than those ad thingies...

Funny you should say that. I don't think I'm breaking any confidences by saying that's what we are planning to do - but any monies raised will go towards a Charity Fund to be donated to a registered charity of the winner's (or winning team's) choosing. We have already pledged to the Fund out of our own pockets, and hope to raise more.